David Rogers Wins Poker Night, Tops Einhorn in N.Y.

By Amanda Gordon -
Jul 18, 2012

David Rogers, chief executive
officer of JD Capital Management LLC, won the Reach Take ’Em to
School Poker Tournament early this morning. Greenlight Capital
Inc. analyst David Tepperman was declared runner-up.

“At the final table I came in with the second-lowest chip
stack,” Rogers, former head of trading for the equities
division at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), said. “I did have a
couple of lucky hands.”

Rogers, who selected a seat at the World Series of Poker
2013 for his prize, said he won with a pair of fives to his
opponent’s king and ten.

Tepperman outlasted his boss, Greenlight CEO David Einhorn,
on his way to claiming a five-night stay at a house on Lamu, an
island off the Kenyan coast.

“My boss is good at poker, so I got rolling with it,”
Tepperman said.

Adam Oestreich, who runs the opportunity desk at Merrill
Lynch, placed third; he chose a two-night stay at Caesars
Atlantic City. Oestreich said he was invited to the event by a
client, Pershing Square Capital Management LP.

The tournament, held this year at Gotham Hall, an event
space in Manhattan, raises funds to prepare high-school students
for Advanced Placement exams. Last year nearly 3,000 students
attended training workshops, Reach Executive Director Kathrine
Mott said.

AP Exams

Michael Sabat, an equity derivatives sales trader at
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., was chairman of the tournament. He
said in high school he took advanced-placement exams in
calculus, Spanish, English and history.

Among those in attendance at the event: Whitney Tilson,
founder and managing partner, T2 Partners LLC, who was just back
from a trip to Italy and Berlin; and Jacques Garibaldi, managing
partner, London Park Investments LLC, who said he is going on a
vacation to Slovakia to visit his in-laws.

The tournament began with 24 tables, which were sold out
three weeks prior to the event, Sabat said. Tables cost $10,000
and came with 10 seats to play, while individual seats cost
$1,000; both included cocktails and buffet dinner.

Prizes went to the top 10 players. Jason Mudrick, president
and chief investment officer of Mudrick Capital Management LP,
placed 10th; he won the tournament in 2010 (taking home a stay
in Kenya, which he still hasn’t used), and placed 14th in 2011.
Oleg Nodelman, a portfolio manager at BVF Partners LP, Seth Lax,
a senior vice president at Contrarian Capital Management LLC,
and Phillip Hawkins, a trader at Bank of America, also made it
to the final table.

Women Players

Among the few women players were Julia Humphries, a trading
assistant in fixed income at Capstone Investment Advisors,
Rebecca MacDonell, who works at Highstar Capital LP, and Olivia
Chung, a lawyer at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. Karina
Kabbash, a hedge-fund intern and New York University student
majoring in economics and Mandarin, stuck to the blackjack
table.

Shayla Williams, one of female masseuses who attended to the
shoulders of players, said, “It’s pretty awkward. I’m used to
working with oils.”

‘About Face’

Karen Bjornson, one of the models featured in the HBO
documentary “About Face: The Supermodels, Then and Now,” did
not go to college. That didn’t hold back her daughters.

Maggie Macdonald, 26, is a Harvard College graduate who
just passed the New York bar and is practicing environmental
law. She wrote one of her college application essays about her
mother’s career choices.

“She was a mom, she wasn’t a glamour puss,” said
Macdonald at a reception and screening of “About Face” last
night. “We had the best school lunches -- they were so good you
wouldn’t want to trade.”

It would have been nice to have a turkey-and-avocado
sandwich prepared by Bjornson right about then; instead a table
offered little cups each filled with one carrot, one tomato and
one stalk of broccoli.